1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling routing of print jobs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Print services may be provided in many different ways. In offices, for example, printers, such as multifunction peripherals (MFPs), are often provided for access by employees. In order to control printing to an MFP, the MFP is typically connected to a print server. In simple systems, print jobs sent to the MFP are received by the print server, where they are queued and then spooled to the MFP. Increasingly, however, print manager software is being provided on the print server to enhance the functionality. The print manager may allow print jobs to be stored on the server, modified, and/or printed by different printers. In an office this allows an employer to control which printers different employees are able to print to, and the type of printing or finishing that they may perform (such as colour, or black and white printing, stapling).
Another printing environment in which print manager software may be provided is in a print shop or on-line printing service. In these businesses printing is charged for, typically per page, and the print manager records jobs being sent to different printers to provide accounts for billing purposes.
A print manager is provided in the above situations to allow control over how print jobs are processed at the print server. However, in view of the cost of large-scale printing and in order to reduce waste, it is desirable to improve the level of control relating to how jobs are printed. Further, because the decision on how a job should be printed usually rests with a user sending a job for printing, it would be desirable to be able to influence the user's decision-making process in order to prevent careless or unintentional waste of printing resources.